In recent years, portable laptop computers have become increasingly popular. Frequently, such laptop computers are battery powered in order to enhance their portability. Preferably, a battery powered laptop computer operates for an extended period of time under battery power before its battery is either recharged or replaced.
Accordingly, it is important to reduce power consumption within an electronic circuit of the laptop computer, in order to extend the period of time during which the electronic circuit operates before recharging or replacing the battery. For this purpose, some previous techniques disable power or disable clock signals to the electronic circuit in response to a specified time elapsing without sensing a particular type of activity. A shortcoming of such previous "timer" techniques is that the electronic circuit can unnecessarily consume excess power while waiting for the timer to expire, even when the electronic circuit is not performing an operation.
Thus, a need has arisen for a method and system in which an electronic circuit consumes less excess power relative to previous techniques.